Berlin – The Magic and Grace of the Costumers – Ev and Chissy
I am eternally grateful to those that have helped me in times of crisis. I send out love and appreciation to Kizzy Steger and Ev Heruth from the Berlin Ballet. They were both wig and costume makers for the Berlin Ballet during my time there. Those ladies in that department had so much that they had to do before, during, and after performances.

But both of these amazing ladies went above and beyond the call in very different ways.

When I got to Berlin, I was a babe in the woods. Everything was new. I was unprepared for the vast and complex ways that this company did the elaborate costumes and wigs. (In America, I never had such an option.)
Ev was the leader of the group. Or at least she seemed to be the one more in charge. I could be wrong about that, but she was the epitome of calm authority. And she was probably one of the kindest women I had ever met.

I could always count on all the costume and wig ladies. They would roll in with all the costumes hanging up and place them in the appropriate places. Then come back in with all the wigs and hair pins to put pin curls on our heads first. Only to then to cover our head with a black mesh and fasten that down securely so that they could place the wigs on our heads. Next, they would hook more pins into the curls from the outside to firmly attach often very heavy wigs, braids, headpieces, and crowns.

These things were often very heavy. Such a thing will change your balance slightly … especially pirouettes. Over time I did get used to it. But at first, I had to deal with headaches that arose from pins sticking into your skull. Just like the pain of point shoes, one learns how to tune such things out … over time.

While you think costumers are important, I realized how intense their job was by watching them closely.

After a performance, all those costumes are stinky and wet from the sweat of the dancers and there are ways to clean such costumes but you can imagine that it is not possible to just put a tutu into the washing machine. Especially when the layers of a tutu can take weeks to create.

The many creative solutions to cleaning our costumes are too vast to even begin to recount here but those ladies are more important than just that.

They hear everything. They know what is going on. They are very tight lipped, but they are also often dancers from their younger days and know the pressures that we impose upon ourselves, and the competition that can happen and how those things may impact our performances.
In so many ways those ladies saved my life and career.

They taught me how to knit. The German way of course. They were laughing at how I was knitting and took it upon themselves to show me how to do it faster. The also reminded me that only God was perfect, so in all sweaters one must put one small error in for humility. Which I did for many years. Now, I just don’t knit anymore. But as a dancer we were always making our own legwarmers, and sweaters to keep us warm.

On my very first performance of Giselle, (I was being a Willi at the back, stage left, in a corner), I was wearing black legwarmers under my long flowing tutu.

The first sequence is for the Queen of the Willis to call us up from our graves … and we slowly (in a spooky way) walk in from the wings like a deathly army of women. We have a veil over our heads to symbolize that we are dead and coming out of the grave. Then we leave the stage, take off our veils and come back in to stand before the Queen commands us to dance.

As I come back on stage. We are still for a moment, I suddenly hear Ev say from the wings, “Susannah, du hast deine Beinwärmer an.”

Meaning that I had my leg warmers still on!

My mind spins, what do I do? Do I walk off the stage? Do I keep them on?

No and No!

 

So, I carefully, pull up my foot and grab one leg warmer off and throw it into the wings, then I change my leg position and pull the other leg warmer off and throw it into the wings.

I only hear one person … chuckle out in the audience.

Let’s just say that I never wore leg warmers to warm up before a show again. Or I never forgot to take them off again.

Thank you, Ev.

At a certain point in the Berlin Ballet, I began getting put into some better roles and the competition in climbing the ladder is fierce in a German Opera company. There is a seniority system in the German Theaters and that allows for jobs to be very secure, and it also becomes difficult to fire people the longer one is there.
That gives the German dancers security. And usurping that structure would cause some stress within the ranks. I was that stress.

In Germany at that time, they had zero unemployment. That meant that if you wanted to change jobs or careers, the government would pay to train you for that job change. It is a fabulous system. So, you can imagine that many dancers as they retired would go into learning about costumes, wig making, being on stage crews, or becoming dance teachers, etc.
And the government would pay you a wage to get retrained while you were studying and becoming competent in another job.

It was a great system and one that we should adopt.
There was a period of time, that I was getting more solo roles of demi-solo roles and someone in the ballet was feeling threatened by my rise in the ranks.

I have my suspicions as to who it was, but I could never catch them in the act.

What they were doing was messing up my quick-change area.
That meant that when I was to come off stage and have to do a costume change, the costume ladies set up booths just off to the side of the stage.

In such moments, it is a real rush. The costume ladies are rushing to get each dancer out and into the next costume, new wigs, new headpieces, etc. The dancers are trying to touch up make up, put powder on to take the shine from sweating off their face, put new shoes on, and get back out to the next entrance.

Each dancer sets the objects in an order for that quick change. That way you don’t have to think about it and it moves faster.

We set it up backstage and then we leave to do what we need to do before the performance.

I would go to the quick-change room and my hair pins would be gone. My hairbrushes were in different places, my lipsticks were not where I put them. And then my shoes would be the wrong point shoes.

Having the right shoes is everything! We need soft shoes for jumping. Otherwise, you sound like a baby elephant on stage. You need hard shoes for the point work. Soft shoes will make your feet bleed and you will not have the support you require for bouncing on the tips of the toes.
At first … I thought I was crazy. I was just being disorganized. I was not paying attention.
But then I started really paying attention!
And something kept being very wrong!
It became clear that someone was moving my stuff. Disorganizing it in a way that created upset, stress, and disturbance. And in shifting the shoes, they were causing me pain, and potentially harming me. But the intended purpose was to probably make me sound like an elephant on the stage, or to make me have to be more careful with the hard point work.

Or … injure me!

I began marking the bottoms of my shoes and placing them in pairs and wrapping my ribbons around each pair. To keep them together.

It became clear that not only were they messing with the pins and makeup, but they were also mixing up the shoes.
Sometimes even putting one soft shoe with a hard shoe.

That is when I went I went to both Chissy and Ev for help. I explained what was happening and they made sure that someone would watch the booth or be in the booth to make sure no one would come in.

I could tell by their looks at each other, that they knew who it was, but they never confirmed my personal suspicions, and I did not ask them if they knew who it was.
And it finally stopped.
After a time, whoever it was gave up and we did not need to continue the effort.
But I suspect that Ev did say something to someone because she announced to me that I did not have to worry about it anymore.

And she was right.

Dancers are highly competitive. Even in other companies, there are petty and callous things that younger dancers will do to older dancers to either consciously or unconsciously cause a dancer to feel insecure or to feel less than good enough.
One learns to have a thick skin.

One learns to ask for help from those that have the power to make a difference.

And one learns to stand strong in the face of criticism.

Through that … I learned that all things are my responsibility and that attention to detail is critical for finding and expressing excellence.
~Suzanne Wagner~